Please explain these three slogans to me:?

Question

WAR IS PEACE,
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH,

They're quoted from the book "1984" by George Orwell. These are the three slogans of the Inner Party.
It would be a huge help to me, if you could help me understand what these three slogans mean!

Answer 1

War is Peace refers to to the fact that while a country is at war, it can get away with murder on the home front, on the pretext of "rooting out traitors." A good example of this is the Espionage Act passed by Congress and signed by Woodrow Wilson in 1917, which had little to do with spies, and a lot to do with allowing the feds to round up anyone who criticized the Government's actions during a war. (Fun trivia fact: Since the United States has officially been in a state of emergency since the Korean War, the Act is still in force).

Freedom is Slavery means that you are supposed to treat your supposedly natural rights as privileges that you need to constantly earn. For instance, in the United States, convicted felons are not allowed to vote, even after they have been released from jail.

Ignorance is Power means that as long as you believe what you are told, the state has the power to justify whatever it wants. Example: in 1998, Clinton ordered tomahawk missles to be fired at a Sudanese Pharmaceutical plant. His rationale was that it was being used to construct bio-weapons. Six months later, the government quietly admitted that it had no conclusive evidence of this.

Answer 2

Orwell may have drawn inspiration from the Nazi Party; compare the following quotes to how propaganda is used in Nineteen Eighty-Four:

Nazi Party
“The broad mass of the nation … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” — Adolf Hitler, in his 1925 book Mein Kampf.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” — Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” — Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Göring while in his jail cell during the Nuremberg Trials.

The three slogans of the Party, on display everywhere, are:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Each of these is of course either contradictory or the opposite of what is normally believed, and in 1984, the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant.. Though logically insensible, the slogans do embody the Party. For instance, through constant "war", the Party can keep domestic peace; when freedom is brought about, the people are enslaved to it, and the ignorance of the people is the strength of the Party. If anybody (like Winston) becomes too smart, they are whisked away for fear of rebellion. Through their constant repetition, the terms become meaningless, and the slogans become axiomatic. This type of misuse of language, and the deliberate self-deception with which the citizens are encouraged to accept it, is called doublethink.

One essential consequence of doublethink is that the Party can rewrite history with impunity, for "The Party is never wrong." The ultimate aim of the Party is, according to O'Brien, to gain and retain full power over all the people of Oceania; he sums this up with perhaps the most distressing prophecy of the entire novel: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.

“ The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. ”

Doublethink
“ The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them

Answer 3

George Orwell was showing how everything can be twisted in a totalitarian society.For instance The Ministry For Love dealt out hate and even ran hate-week.The Ministry For Plenty dealt outs scarcities. So war is peace,Freedom is slavery,and ignorance is strength.Have you noticed how the name Big Brother has changed.
You mention Big Brother in 1950 and I think of dictators.
But if I mention Big Brother now you think of t.v.

Answer 4

War is peace= if you on a bright side: a war is triggered is to bring a more organised system to a country.Thus it's a peace symbol in the future.Whereas if a war's conducted by a bad guy then it's certainly a despair option for everybody.

ignorance is strength= bright side: people's ignorance to you can force you to thrive to be more competent and successful.The feelings that you want to show the best of you to others, is the strength. Dark side= it may also lead to suicidal thoughts and sorrow, because one might think the world doesn't need he/she anymore.
These slogans are general thoughts, it doesn't has specific answers.Best answers are always the best debates.

Answer 5

With the Q's your asking, should you try a different author, or just get your own interpretation, certain words mean different things to many. Take the text in which it was written, and ponder for a moment, then come to your own conclusion. Not to be rude in the slightest, but what do these things mean to you?